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The wife and I went up to Charles City, Iowa today to the State Show for IH in Iowa. For us it was pretty much a trip up Highway 14. While going through Greene, Iowa a smile came to my face. A FORMER John Deere dealership that had closed years ago had been reopened and is currently a CaseIH dealership. I along with my dad frequented that JD dealer for John Deere #6 corn sheller parts when I was a teenager and that was 30 years ago. We had a dealer in Grundy Center Iowa but if you walked in and asked for sheller parts they had no clue what you were talking about. For some reason this dealer in Greene could get our stuff.I couldn't help but chuckle. There have been numerous times old JD has stomped on our IH grounds. Nice to see it the other way just once.Can't remember the name for the JD dealer but I think it was McRoberts Red Power today.

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How is that justice, a former JD dealership now being FIAT owned CASEIH? My thinking on that is I would have to know why the JD dealership closed. Maybe a forced thing by JD in favor of a chain or lack of new equipment sales? Owner retired/died and there was none of the kids who wanted to carry on? JD didn't kill IH so how is it justice at all? Heck we had a family chain of JD dealerships here. Dad more or less forced all his boys to get degrees in management then set them up managing a store. When dad died they sold off everything. None of the kids wanted to be in AG related business. The one place is a lumber yard, the original place sells irrigation systems. The home town for that place had IH, AC and the JD dealers. Then for a few years it had nothing. Now just JD with the next nearest dealer being McCormick 40 miles away. CASEIH and AGCO are both over 60 miles......guess what new tractors you see over there? Really wish it was different. Really wish that at least IH, Case and AC were around cause I like the idea of competition.

Rick

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How is that justice, a former JD dealership now being FIAT owned CASEIH? My thinking on that is I would have to know why the JD dealership closed. Maybe a forced thing by JD in favor of a chain or lack of new equipment sales? Owner retired/died and there was none of the kids who wanted to carry on? JD didn't kill IH so how is it justice at all? Heck we had a family chain of JD dealerships here. Dad more or less forced all his boys to get degrees in management then set them up managing a store. When dad died they sold off everything. None of the kids wanted to be in AG related business. The one place is a lumber yard, the original place sells irrigation systems. The home town for that place had IH, AC and the JD dealers. Then for a few years it had nothing. Now just JD with the next nearest dealer being McCormick 40 miles away. CASEIH and AGCO are both over 60 miles......guess what new tractors you see over there? Really wish it was different. Really wish that at least IH, Case and AC were around cause I like the idea of competition.

Rick

He`s baaaaaaack!

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I guess rooting for one dealership to go down and be replaced by another is no different then rooting for a sports team. Right after the merger between CIH and NH we lost our two nearest NH dealers. The one reopened as a JD dealer and basically took the place of the JD dealer in that same town that had closed 5 years earlier. The other one was taken over by the JD store that was right next to it. The owners remodeled the NH store to make it the parts/shown room store and remodeled the JD store into offices for management. So for awhile we had no local NH equipment dealers but then about 4 years ago our last remaining independent Case dealer was forced to drop red equipment. So they took on the NH lineup and now NH is slowly gaining market share as they get their customers switched from AFs to CRs and so in.

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Just normal business succession. Back 50 years ago in my home town, the JD dealer went out as sales weren't good. Then the Massey dealer went out in the 1990's. That left only the CIH dealer until 2014 when he went out also. Now there are no dealers there and you have to travel 40 miles to the nearest CIH dealer.

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Just normal business succession. Back 50 years ago in my home town, the JD dealer went out as sales weren't good. Then the Massey dealer went out in the 1990's. That left only the CIH dealer until 2014 when he went out also. Now there are no dealers there and you have to travel 40 miles to the nearest CIH dealer.

Same thing in my home town 20 miles from Moline. Old Deere dealer was right down town, not near enough room to store much equipment. They had little equip. lots scattered all over town. Mother Deere set-up New Big dealer just outside town on US Route 6. Last time I snooped a year ago the new dealer had a dozen new combines, couple used, 25-30 new tractors, lots of hay equipment, couple new sprayers, and about 20 little compact tractors and 30 little mowers.

The old downtown Deere dealer didn't even want the lawn & garden business, the Simplicity and Schwinn dealer took that business from Deere until the new Deere dealer took it.

Used to be 2 IH dealers, the Old dealer downtown, dealer I used for parts. Then the new Big dealer out along side where the new Deere dealer would be built couple years later. Both IH dealers are long gone.

Used to be an Allis, and Oliver dealership that is now Springfield Arms. Still the old brick building that back in the 1950's was a Minny dealer, then in the late 70's was the New IH dealer while his new building was being built.

Just the natural cycle of of business, companies come and go, nothing lasts forever.

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It just made me smile and I'm not going to feel bad for that. I've read numerous times where green paint is setting on what once was red. It was nice to see it the other way around just once. Was I rooting for the green dealer to go out, no that's not my style.

Doctor Evil is right, businesses come and go, it's a natural cycle. This time I smiled, it's that simple.

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It's McRoberts RedPower. Was McRoberts Imp. for many years and John sold out to Red Power who has many dealerships in northern IA . This is the dealership I have been going to all my life but most of that time was at their old location just down the road on Hwy. 14.

And Old Tanker why are you such a Jack A**. Sometimes it's best to keep your mouth shut rather than criticize everything people post.

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What it really is, on here at least, if kicking a dead horse. Wanna bash Deere? Go to a Deere forum where at least you can stir the pot and get responses, not a bunch of guys cheering you on and no chance that someone may disagree!

I happen to like IH and Ford. Plus Cat. Only 2 green tractors interest me at all, the R my dad had that I failed to find and the MC, first crawler I ever operated. Other than dads R and one MC you can crush the rest as far as I'm concerned.

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Just the money losing JEEP division. JEEP was always an appendage to Chrysler Corp ever since they purchased it. Otherwise Fiat Chrysler is making decent money and Sergio Marchione wants to keep it that way. In this way he is a lot smarter than Brooks McCormick who hung on to the money losing IH Construction division to the bitter end and didn't get much for it when it was sold to Komatsu. McCormick should have sold it back in 1970 when there was a good economy that would have supported a much higher sale price. Furthermore, if he had got rid of Wisconsin Steel, Solar, and West Pullman at the same time IH might have weathered the 1980's slump much longer than it did. But sooner or later they would have needed a lot of new capital and I suspect by the early 1990s they would have merged with somebody. Just remember that Case was in deep trouble before Jim Ketelsen and Tenneco bought out the IH ag division. Had that purchase not been needed there was no way the Tenneco Board of Directors would have given him more money to sewer into Case. It was only the IH acquisition that gave Case a new lease on life. As it was the Tenneco Board of directors got fed up with Ketelsen liquidating Tenneco oil and gas assets to support Case IH through the tough times in the late 1980's. In the end The Board of Directors removed Ketelsen as President of Tenneco in mid 1991. Shortly after that Case IH for sale signs started to show up and the sale was consummated in i999 with the merger between themselves and New Holland to form CNH. And Sergio Marchione is well aware of all these events and I suspect he doesn't want a repeat at Chrysler. Hence the logic to sell off the JEEP division.

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Phelps does have a location in Greene. Grundy Center, Hubbard, Hampton, and Greene.

I can't remember the name of the dealership that was in this building. Greene didn't have a JD dealer for many years and then Phelps bought the welding shop and opened a location.

Old Tanker you can say what ever you want but I still think you are a Jack A**.

You can think what you want. But I'm not going to join this game. I don't do personal attacks or call names on a computer.

I think the thing that trips me up here is I can go to a Ford or AC tractor forum and people talk tractors. Here, and I do enjoy here, good people, good info, the old Red VS Green monster seems to always creep up. The same thing happens on the few JD forums I've checked out with the exception of the one dedicated to JD crawlers. I can hang out with Case, AC or Oliver guys and there is friendly teasing about the different brands most often but nothing like the IH VS JD thing at all. I guess what I don't understand is why. JD didn't kill IH. IH management killed IH. Now ask me what I think about seeing more and more CaseIH equipment in areas like the Red River Valley area in MN and ND that was almost solid JD 40 years ago? I love it!

I also believe that if you wish to say something bad about something or someone you say it to their face, not behind their backs. To me, a JD guy bashing IH or CaseIH, or the opposite, a IH or CaseIH fan bashing each other in a venue where only others who don't care for or like what's being bashed crosses that line.

Now you want to get together sometime and discuss this face to face and call me names? I'm good with that. Heck for all I care you can even throw a punch. But do it to my face.

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I think you are missing my point Old Tanker. I don't mind people bashing IH. I agree that IH management made many dumb mistakes which contributed to their downfall.

The point is that this was just a lighthearted post pointing out that he thought it was funny that the CIH dealer was in the old JD building. You came on acting superior and criticizing that post. You and I have now managed to ruin what started out as a light hearted fun post.

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How is that justice, a former JD dealership now being FIAT owned CASEIH? My thinking on that is I would have to know why the JD dealership closed. Maybe a forced thing by JD in favor of a chain or lack of new equipment sales? Owner retired/died and there was none of the kids who wanted to carry on? JD didn't kill IH so how is it justice at all? Heck we had a family chain of JD dealerships here. Dad more or less forced all his boys to get degrees in management then set them up managing a store. When dad died they sold off everything. None of the kids wanted to be in AG related business. The one place is a lumber yard, the original place sells irrigation systems. The home town for that place had IH, AC and the JD dealers. Then for a few years it had nothing. Now just JD with the next nearest dealer being McCormick 40 miles away. CASEIH and AGCO are both over 60 miles......guess what new tractors you see over there? Really wish it was different. Really wish that at least IH, Case and AC were around cause I like the idea of competition.

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Now you want to get together sometime and discuss this face to face and call me names? I'm good with that. Heck for all I care you can even throw a punch. But do it to my face.

Rick

And the loser buys the drinks!

As we progress through life (get older), I find in these situations both parties to a physical altercation end up the loser. I have had every finger on each hand and each wrist broken. What stupidity on my part. The last bit of fun, somewhere near forty years ago, I was stabbed in the hip and grabbed a beer bottle and nearly hit my opponent over the head with it. I had the bottle in the air preparing to strike when a thought from the Lord hit me like a ton of bricks and said you may kill this guy, and I dropped the bottle, and walked away.

The benefit of a reasonably small community is the opponent several years later became a bank customer of mine. He joked about our altercation and stated he thought I was going to kill him. I ignored the conversation as it was me who was stabbed, not him.

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I think you are missing my point Old Tanker. I don't mind people bashing IH. I agree that IH management made many dumb mistakes which contributed to their downfall.

The point is that this was just a lighthearted post pointing out that he thought it was funny that the CIH dealer was in the old JD building. You came on acting superior and criticizing that post. You and I have now managed to ruin what started out as a light hearted fun post.

If I took the OP's post the wrong way then I'm sorry. I thought he was trying to bash.

8 minutes ago, RichardDSalyer said:

And the loser buys the drinks!

As we progress through life (get older), I find in these situations both parties to a physical altercation end up the loser. I have had every finger on each hand and each wrist broken. What stupidity on my part. The last bit of fun, somewhere near forty years ago, I was stabbed in the hip and grabbed a beer bottle and nearly hit my opponent over the head with it. I had the bottle in the air preparing to strike when a thought from the Lord hit me like a ton of bricks and said you may kill this guy, and I dropped the bottle, and walked away.

The benefit of a reasonably small community is the opponent several years later became a bank customer of mine. He joked about our altercation and stated he thought I was going to kill him. I ignored the conversation as it was me who was stabbed, not him.

I never said I was going to swing back. With my physical impairments me swinging back would be about as dumb as could be! I just said he could even throw a punch, might make him feel better!

I think the op just got a kick out of the irony of an red dealer in what had been a green dealer. Simple as that. He even said so tho in slightly different words. And that is the way i took this and most posts of this nature, light hearted or teasing. Now some may not be and there will always be those who take all of them as not being in good fun.... but lets not make too much out of this please. Not worth arguing about all day.